Listgrid problems in latest nightly builds

[martintaal]

Hi,
For your information (I know I can't report real bugs for nightly builds), but maybe you are not aware of the following issues.

The following I can reproduce in the feature example:
- if the grid does not have focus then I need to click twice to open the column header context menu, in addition it seems that the mouse pointer is not correct in this case either.
- In this example: /SmartClient_Explorer.html#gridCellWidgets, if I freeze a column the data disappears.
- Also for record components (gridCellWidgets example), (double-)clicking the header above the icons columns resizes the column

The following I can't reproduce in the feature example, but maybe you can give some pointers on what has changed, so I can research further:
- Sometimes the popup menu is shown in the middle of the screen
- The icons used for the sorting of a column header and the icon for the context menu seem to have changed. Is that indeed the case?
- The title is repeated in the column header (see the attached image)
- The way the styling of a sorted column header (which has the focus) is done seems to have changed.

Another question, is there any difference in builds between these 2 locations:
http://www.smartclient.com/builds/SmartClient/8.x/LGPL
http://www.smartclient.com/builds/SmartClient/8.1/LGPL

(note, the 8.x versus 8.1)

I also tried the above on the 8.1 release and it shows the same behavior.

gr. Martin

[Isomorphic]

Nothing wrong with bug reports against nightly builds, however, all the same information needs to be reported, including browser version and exact build date.

8.x builds will become 8.2. 8.1 builds will become 8.1.1, a bugfix only release.

[martintaal]

Hi,
tested with chrome 13 on Ubuntu, latest nightly of 21 august (downloaded from 8.x location) and also tested using the 8.1 release (same result).

gr. Martin

[martintaal]

I was wondering if someone has had a change to look at this.

gr. Martin

[Isomorphic]

Hello Martin,

Some comments / answers inline

The following I can reproduce in the feature example:
- if the grid does not have focus then I need to click twice to open the column header context menu, in addition it seems that the mouse pointer is not correct in this case either.

We're not seeing what you mean here. Can you give us exact steps to reproduce? For example, in the feature explorer, if you select "Live Grid" then roll over the headers of the grid we're seeing the correct mouse pointer, and right clicking shows the context menu as expected.

- In this example: /SmartClient_Explorer.html#gridCellWidgets, if I freeze a column the data disappears.

Again, we're not reproducing this - can you clarify what you mean? Which field are you freezing, and what's disappearing (all rows from the listGrid body, contents of some field, something else?)

- Also for record components (gridCellWidgets example), (double-)clicking the header above the icons columns resizes the column

Noted - The bug here is that we're attempting to auto-fit to the cell contents and not taking the icons into account. We'll resolve this in the framework in the near future but in the meantime you can workaround by setting 'canAutoFitFields' to false, or changing the headerAutoFitEvent.

The following I can't reproduce in the feature example, but maybe you can give some pointers on what has changed, so I can research further:
- Sometimes the popup menu is shown in the middle of the screen

The pop up menu has logic to position itself onscreen, so if you're close to the edge of the visible browser window, the menu shouldn't require you to scroll to access its items. We are not aware of any bugs that should make it pop up in the middle of the screen - if you can find a way to consistently reproduce let us know and we'll take a look. (Also - as always check the developer console in case anything is logged which seems related).

- The icons used for the sorting of a column header and the icon for the context menu seem to have changed. Is that indeed the case?
- The title is repeated in the column header (see the attached image)
- The way the styling of a sorted column header (which has the focus) is done seems to have changed.

There have been a number of skinning changes in various skins, however obviously we're not seeing the odd appearance you describe (doubled headers, etc).
As a sanity check, try clearing your browser cache and hitting the page to ensure you're not looking at stale media somehow.
If you continue to reproduce this, its probably due to some skinning customizations within your application. It's difficult for us to comment further on this without knowing what they are.

[martintaal]

Hi,
Okay after additional testing, research and diffing source code: in the 8.* release the headerButtonConstructor of a list grid changed from ImgButton to Button. Changing it back to ImgButton solved the non-reproducable issues for us.

This took me about 4 hours to find (must be me...).

Again, it would be so great to have a detailed overview for what changes in the subsequence nightly builds of Smartclient. Things I miss dearly:
- a public issue tracker
- a public accessible source versioning system
- a public accessible build system to see what issues/changes are present in a build

Are there any plans at Isomorphic to make this information publically available in the foreseeable future?

gr. Martin

[Isomorphic]

Sorry to hear this took time to track down, BUT, this actually *was* mentioned in the release notes and even on the blog (IE performance improvements for ListGrids with lots of headers). We also do have a public issue tracker (it's for SmartGWT but SmartClient issues can be posted there too).

And, source code is available for every nightly and every release. You can easily obtain a diff between your existing version and whatever you are installing.

The question is whether release notes or even going through a full source diff is really going to make you realize you have somehow created a dependency on having ImgButton vs Button ListGrid headers somewhere in your code that might be affected. Probably not, and not in this instance.

So again, it's too bad this took time to solve, but blaming it on Isomorphic publishing too little information isn't accurate or productive. If anything, you might want to have a system for tracking bits of application code that reach far enough into internals to make you feel queasy. You could consult such a tracker when an upgrade has strange effects.

[martintaal]

Hi,
Thanks for your reply. Clear if it is mentioned there then I should have read better, for sure, and then I should not have posted it like this!

But for my information, where are the release notes? I checked the changelog.html but could not find it.

I agree that if you extend/make use of a solution in an extensive way that even release notes do not necessarily help as you need to match with all the detailed changes/extensions you did yourselves. But release notes with links to changesets do help imo (see below).

And indeed as you propose diffing the source code is a good approach, also to get a feel for newer features which are under development.

For bug tracking, what we use internally ourselves is that we push/commit mostly against issues in an issue tracker. The issues automatically get notes appended with a link to the changeset of the commit. The issue links are part of the release notes. Making the release notes integrate with the code changes in that release.
I also have used this type of integration in other (open source) projects. It is a great source of information.

gr. Martin

[Isomorphic]

The changelog.html file was actually omitted in the 8.1 release but this was fixed in the next nightly after that.